


Talk To Me

by Omorka



Category: Eureka
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's up in Eureka - and Jo can't get anyone to tell her what's going on!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talk To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HopefulNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/gifts).



> Saw the Jo and Zane prompt, and I had to do something with it. Established relationship and not too shippy; hope that's okay!

It was the coffee that tipped her off.

Jo arrived at her usual time at the sheriff's office, set down her own Vinspresso, and started thumbing through the paperwork left over from the first half of the week. Things had been relatively quiet, in that they'd had one emergency per day and only one big explosion so far, but yesterday's sudden alterations in air pressure had burst every pneumatic tire in Eureka and meant that they had to walk all the way to Global. There'd been no time left at the end of the day to get any filing done, much less start filling out Wednesday's incident report.

Sheriff Carter drifted in a couple of minutes late. That was unusual, but not terribly unusual; if he was going to be significantly late, he always called, but two minutes might just have been S.A.R.A.H. having a cranky moment and the Jeep not wanting to start.

He had his own Vinspresso at his mouth, sipping as he walked to his desk. _That_ was what made her suspicious. Jack never drank anything while he was still moving; in fact, it had been almost a year before she'd seen him drink while standing up, even though he had a cup of something in his hand half the time. He was usually talking instead.

"Everything okay?" she called out, eyes on the coffee cup.

"Mmm," he replied, nodding and sinking into his desk chair. He set the cup aside and switched his computer on.

She frowned. Jack generally wasn't that laconic; in fact, getting him to stop defending himself was usually harder than getting him started. "You're late. What's up?" she said, trying to sound accusing but not too angry.

He gave her the ashamed-little-kid look, grinned weakly and shrugged.

She raised an eyebrow. "Nothing to say for yourself?"

He shook his head and went back to poking at his mouse.

She dropped her own empty coffee cup in the trash. "I'm a little tired, myself," she noted, carefully. "I'm going to walk across the street and pick up another Vinspresso. You want a refill?"

He shook his head again. Did something like panic flash in his eyes for a split second? If it did, it faded fast; he went back to being relaxed before she was sure she'd seen it.

She left without another word. The street seemed strangely empty as she crossed the street and walked the one block to Cafe Diem.

She pushed open the door, and the bell rang into uninterrupted quiet. She stopped abruptly just short of the counter, her eyes sweeping the restaurant.

It was just as crowded as it ever was. The occasional clink of fork against plate and the quiet shuffle of feet on the floor were the only sounds. No conversations. No phone calls. No one was even ordering.

Vince leaned against the counter, smiling. He gestured at the espresso machine and quirked his eyebrows.

Jo took the last few steps to the nearest stool. "Actually, Vince, can you make me a mocha milkshake? I think I want something a little cooler."

He grinned and nodded. Just as he turned away, she held up one hand. "Also, what's your breakfast special today?"

He pointed to a plate at the edge of the counter. It contained two crepes wrapped around what looked like fresh fruit salad and topped with sour cream.

She peered at it. "What's in it?"

Vince stopped, and looked distressed for a moment. Then he ducked back into the kitchen. He came back with a bowl containing a kiwi, a mango, a pineapple, several strawberries, a satsuma, and a small bunch of grapes.

She fixed him with a stare. "You couldn't have just told me?"

For an instant, his face melted into the most mournful look she'd ever seen, halfway between a whipped puppy and a baby seal facing a club. He shook his head "no" very slowly. Then the grief evaporated, and he turned back to the shake machine, smiling as it purred.

"To go, please," she added.

She accepted the tall paper cup from Vince and stepped outside, grateful to get away from the eerie near-silence. Reaching into her pocket, she flipped out her phone and started dialing.

No answer at the sheriff's office. No answer at Global's main desk. No answer at Henry's station. Jack didn't pick up his own phone; neither did Henry, Allison, or Stark. Calling Jack's home phone number got her S.A.R.A.H.

"Hey, was Carter acting strangely this morning?" she asked the house.

"Actually, yes," S.A.R.A.H. replied in a voice that would have been sniffly if the house actually breathed. "Neither he nor Zoe said a single word to me between getting up this morning and leaving. They even banged on the door to get out instead of asking me to open it! I have no idea what I did to deserve the silent treatment."

"It's not just you. He hasn't said a word to me yet today, either." Jo pressed her lips together in thought. "You haven't detected any impurities in the air? Like that pollen that one time?"

"Just a minute." The line hummed as the house checked her filters. "I'm not detecting anything like that. I will do a finer-grained search for other contaminants, but it may take a while. Would you like me to call you back if I find anything?"

"Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks." Jo snapped the phone shut and shuddered. That the first voice she'd heard all day was that artificially generated one was disturbing her more than she'd prefer to admit.

She flipped the phone back open. One more try before she called the source of that voice. If this one didn't answer, though, she was going to have to shoot something.

He answered on the third ring. "Hey, Jo. What's up?"

"Oh, thank God. Zane, where are you?" she blurted before catching herself.

"I'm at Global, like normal. Um, you sound upset - was I supposed to meet you for breakfast and forgot?" Zane's voice was wary.

"No, it's just - I think there's something wrong. No one will talk to me, and both Carter and Vince are acting like they _can't_." She paused. "Things are okay at Global, though?"

"I don't know. I got here at five-thirty this morning, when there was no one here but the cleaner and his 'bots, and I haven't been out of my lab. Hold on." She heard his door sliding open and his feet moving down the hallway. Somewhere away from the phone, his voice said "Hey, what time is it?" There was no reply.

More movement, the same question. Nothing.

"Um, hey, maybe you'd better get up here," he muttered into the phone again. "Neither Bryant nor Pelfer will talk to me, either, and getting Bryant to shut up is usually a chore."

"I'm on my way." She hung up and then called the sheriff's office again, waiting until the voice mail kicked in. "Hey, Carter, this is Jo. Zane says he's got an issue up at Global. I'm going to check it out. Hold down the fort while I'm gone, okay?" Closing the phone one more time, she dropped it into her pocket and climbed into the patrol car.

\---

Zane knocked on Dr. Blake's office door. "Hey, can I come in?"

There was no answer, but the buzzer sounded. He pushed the door open; she was seated behind the glass expanse of her desk, facing her computer, but her hands were in her lap.

"Dr. Blake, I think we might have a teeny little problem," he started. "First of all, can you tell me what time it is?"

She blinked at him and glanced at her watch. Her eyes flared slightly, and she looked back at him in alarm. Alarm swelled to panic, and she shook her head frantically. Then the fear faded, and her face returned to its normal regal expression.

"Neither can anyone else in the building." Zane spun one of her chairs to face him and straddled it. "In fact, so far no one will talk to me at all. They'll point, nod, gesture, all that stuff, but no words." He pulled a pad of paper and a cheap ballpoint from his shirt pocket. "Can you write down for me what time it is? Or, while we're on the topic, what you want me to do about the problem?"

Again, panic roiled in her eyes. She uncapped the pen, set the point on the paper, and stared at it. She looked up at him, then at the paper, then at him again. Finally, she shook her head. Again, the terror faded back to her usual all-business look.

He leaned forward. "Can you draw it for me?"

Her face lit up; she nodded, and the pen skipped across the paper. She turned it back to him. Two figures in lab coats bent over a terminal, but the drawing wasn't detailed enough to make out who they were.

Zane rubbed his forehead with the palm of one hand. This was going to be like playing Twenty Questions. "Can you type the names of these guys?"

Terror, and another head-shake. Great. "Can you point to the letters their names begin with?" No, again. "If I brought up names on the screen, could you recognize them?" Another head shake, and the fear was starting to turn to anger; she clenched her fists on the glass desktop. "If I brought up their personnel images, could you pick them out?" Finally, a nod, and a look of determination. Zane slipped behind the counter and called up the main employee file.

This was not going to be a short process, but sometimes brute force was the only way to solve a programming problem. Zane pulled up the photos for all the A's.

\---

Jo jogged up the main stairs into the GD lobby. "Hey," she greeted each of the security guards as she passed them; they nodded and waved to her, but none of them spoke. Oh, boy.

Zane waved her over to Larry's cubicle just off the main floor. Larry was curled up in the corner with his fists pressed to his mouth. "What's wrong with him?" she asked as Zane slid into the cube's only chair.

"I might have been a little too harsh with him when I pointed out he couldn't talk," Zane sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Everyone else seems to forget as soon as I stop actively reminding them, but he freaked out and has remained in a profound state of freaked-out-itude." He handed her Dr. Blake's drawing and pulled up two images on the screen. "After flipping through the employee files of pretty much half the scientists in the building, Dr. Blake fingered these two as being somehow related to the problem." He slumped a bit. "But she can't explain _why_. She can point, gesture, draw, and nod 'yes' and 'no,' but she can't give me anything that involves language at all."

Jo canted her head to one side. "So let's go get these clowns and find out - oh, wait, you think they won't be able to tell us what's going on either?"

"I don't know." Zane stood up. "But at a minimum, I can get a look at what they were working on. I just hope it helps."

\---

Jo marched into the infirmary. "Special delivery." She dropped Dr. Istobal's unconscious form onto the closest bed. The nurse on duty leaped up, ran over, and started hooking him to the telemetry unit.

Zane struggled in with the lighter form of Dr. Limonthas. "The awful thing is, until they wake them up, we won't even be able to find out whether they can talk or not."

"Did you get anything from the wreckage of the gadget?" When they'd discovered the two unconscious scientists thrown into the corners of the lab, they'd momentarily dropped their quest and brought them straight back here.

"It looked like it might be - might have been, I guess - a biomedical interface. Not one of my specialties," he admitted.

"How could a biomed interface here at Global affect Carter back at the bunker?" Jo wondered.

"No clue." Zane ran his hand through his hair again as one of the doctors ran over and began reading the non-numeric outputs on the telemetry. "Dr. Deacon isn't in the building, but no one answers at his shop. There aren't that many other generalists, other than me, I mean, now that Stark's gone."

A crash came from the far end of the infirmary. Zane and Jo exchanged a glance, and Jo's hand fell to the pistol on her hip. They edged around the curtain barrier that separated the beds; Jo leaped forward and tackled the figure who attempted to flee.

"Oh, it's just Fargo," she muttered in disappointment, letting the frenetically squirming scientist back up. The tray he'd knocked over lay half-under the hospital bed.

Fargo nodded, his face nearly chalk-white. He leaned against the back wall and began a flurry of pointing and waving.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, Fargo." Zane glanced at Jo. "He's like Larry. He knows he can't communicate and he's flipping out over it."

"I'm surprised he hasn't passed out yet," Jo observed. "Wait, was that a right-hand rule he just did?"

Fargo nodded wildly and repeated the series of gestures at half-speed. Zane frowned, then nodded back. "Something about changes in a magnetic field due to a fluctuating electrical charge. I can't get the details." He looked more closely at the shorter scientist. "For someone having a full-on panic attack and almost completely aphasic, Fargo's actually remarkably lucid."

Jo shrugged. "Maybe being used to panic attacks is helping?"

"Maybe." Zane stood up. "He managed some content-bearing gestures a minute ago. Let me try something."

Zane stepped back about a foot and held up one hand. Very slowly, he spelled out F-A-R-G-O D-O Y-O-U K-N-O-W W-H-A-T H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D in the manual alphabet.

Jo scowled. "Zane, they can understand us. At least, Carter responded to questions and Vince got my order right."

Fargo's eyes fluttered. He opened and closed his right hand twice, then looked at Zane like he'd hit him. Then he stared off into space for a moment. He raised his right hand in a loose fist, and nodded it at Zane, his face twisted in concentration.

"Oh, crud. Can't use letters, but . . . " Zane trailed off. "Terminal, I need a terminal." He made a beeline for the computer at the nurse's desk.

"What just happened?" Jo asked, herding Fargo along with them.

Zane's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Fargo can't fingerspell, either, and _I_ don't know ASL."

"Sign language?" Jo looked at Fargo, startled. "I didn't know Fargo knew sign language, either." Fargo closed his right hand, stretched out his thumb and index finger, and then brought them together until they were almost touching; his hand shook with the effort.

"A little bit," announced the computer screen, in S.A.R.A.H.'s voice.

"Fortunately, the linguistics department has been working on an autotranslator," Zane smirked.

Face flushed, Fargo's hands worked hesitantly in front of him. "Thank you. You give me my voice back," the interpreter said.

"No biggie. Now, tell us what happened so we can fix it," Zane said with a grin.

\---

Zane finished soldering the last resistor in place. "Okay, I think that's got it." He closed the metal casing and tightened two screws to keep the makeshift cover shut.

"What now?" Jo asked. The device looked a lot like a laser rifle without the focusing lenses.

With a broad, cocky grin, Zane explained, "According to the readings Fargo called up for me, our two mad scientists of the day were working on some sort of neural enhancer for treating natural aphasia. When the device went up, it sent out an electromagnetic pulse that had the opposite effect - wherever it encountered dormant brain tissue, it disrupted the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain. Because it was such a thorough disruption, no one was upset about it - it was as if they not only couldn't speak, they couldn't remember ever having been able to, so they weren't upset about it until one of us reminded them."

"Except for Fargo and Larry?" she asked. Fargo nodded.

"I hate to say it, but they both have very good verbal memories. Maybe they just couldn't not-notice without losing important parts of their personalities, too." Zane shrugged. "If it was total aphasia, Fargo shouldn't be able to use any language at all, and ASL is a language, even the pidgin Sign we've been using, so there's got to be a little bit of language processing left. It's just not vocal or written language." He glanced at Fargo. "Maybe Fargo's not being proficient is working in our favor; he hasn't internalized it fully, so it's being processed as much as a motor thing as a language." Fargo nodded emphatically.

"Why didn't it get us?" Jo was amused; Zane didn't usually get to do the big explanation, and she didn't normally get to ask the 'dumb' questions - but Henry wasn't here, and neither was Carter.

"I was already awake when the pulse went off, and I'll bet you were, too," Zane pointed out. "I'm willing to bet the night watch and the cleaner are fine, but they're all asleep after their shifts."

"So what next?" Jo hefted the gadget.

"This produces an electromagnetic pulse that _should_ undo the effects of the original one." Zane's grin got bigger. "You'll have to aim it at the exact center of their cranial mass; we don't want it to just affect one hemisphere."

"So basically, I have to shoot everyone in town in the head with this thing." Jo fingered the oversized button that served as the trigger.

"Yup." Zane's grin slopped over into a smirk. "Happy Wednesday."

She pivoted on one heel and fired at Fargo. The device made a very satisfying _thunk_ and the end flashed a blinding shade of blue. Fargo squeaked and fell over.

"Whoops. Did it knock him out?" Jo set the pulse rifle down and picked Fargo back up off the floor.

"Gbflpx. Nnnghung. Engh. Nnno, but it m-made me lose my sense of b-b-balance for a mm-moment there." Fargo found his footing and stood back up. "Uh, thanks again."

"No problem." Jo picked the device back up. "Think you boys can build another one and start with the rest of the Global staff?"

"Yeah, we can do that." Zane's smirk curled into a leer. "But I think I want to watch you work instead."

"Behave." She slapped him lightly on the backside. "This is serious." She tried to arrange her features into a businesslike facade. "I have to go zap my boss."

"You shot the sh-sheriff?" offered Fargo, collecting a pair of chips from a drawer.

"But no one shoots the deputy," Zane finished.

Jo gave him a peck on the cheek and marched out, a predatory gleam in her eye.


End file.
